15 years or so ago Bill Gates released his book "The Road Ahead" which spoke of the "information highway" as a separate beast from "the internet", which Bill saw as a thing kind of like "the highway" but not really...

In amongst all sorts of silly stuff there are some interest predictions in this book.

My favourite part is his discussion of intellectual property and how the highway will allow customers to buy licenses to music/movies/books for almost nothing to listen/watch/read via "the highway".

Quote:

"Buying" a song or album will really mean buying the right to access the appropriate bits.

[...]

For example, a song could be made available on a pay-per-hearing basis. Each time you listened to it, your account would be charged some small amount, such as 5 cents. At that rate, it would cost 60 cents to listen to a twelve-song "album". [...] If you found that you liked only one song on the album, you could play it three hundred times, at a nickle each time, for your $15.

He spoke of all this (buying rights, streaming over super fast internets) before he even considered the idea of a physical playing device able to hold tens of thousands of songs.